PhD student in Information Systems and Innovation
Research Interests
Thesis: 'Investigating the Relationship Between Collective Action and Technological Innovations in the Context of the Microfinance Movement'
The microfinance social movement is the offshoot of many experiments around the world that coalesced around the central idea of eradicating poverty and promoting economic growth through the poor’s access to financial markets. Beyond the firmly established contribution of a wide range of ad hoc, small scale players and informal microfinance arrangements to the United Nation Millennium Development Goals, the microfinance movement has also attracted the interest of banks and private investors. Almost three decades later, microfinance is an international social business worth more than $17 billion (in terms of outstanding loans) that only represents 10% of its market potential. Therefore the debate has intensified on how to modernize the management of microfinance service providers (MSPs) and sustain the mechanisms of coordinating and organising the collective action of the microfinance community.
Recently, and somewhat blindly, a belief among mainstream microfinance has championed the idea of IT as an effective way to harness institutional professionalism and to leverage MSPs’ transparency and accountability. Computer based IS such as web based management systems, microfinance mobile banking and open source software for microfinance are deemed crucial to track and monitor MSPs’ operations, including group lending and social performance. However, this instrumental perspective on IT implies an illusion of control over the existing resources and anticipates enhanced institutional performance which has long been challenged by IS literature. Moreover, there is little empirical research that unravels the challenges and prospects inherent in the amalgamation of IT with human practices and social relations in the context of the microfinance movement.
A qualitative case study design is utilised and is composed of three ‘industry-level’ IT projects for microfinance studied throughout their development and implementation both within and across the microfinance community of the Middle East and North Africa region.
This research contributes to the study of the relationship between technology and organizing collective action. It draws on the 3rd wave of research within the field of Science and Technology Studies and its insights into how social reality endures by enacting the connection between people’s ideas and the technologies mediating their interactions. Accordingly, this thesis seeks to provide an alternative conceptualisation of IT innovation in the context of the microfinance movement and offers an analytical examination of the changes in the transitional relationship between collective IT projects and the microfinance community. It therefore asks what makes microfinance collective action sustainable by investigating how relations of multiple interest groups are sustained through collective microfinance IT projects, embodying particular and temporary socio-technical arrangements.
Supervisor